Ruby Sisson Library

"From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory"--

Many famed music producers, however brilliant, become known for a particular sound which has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin, on the other hand, is most famous for something else: for creating a strong safe space where artists of wildly different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. To surprise themselves, and thus the world. Rubin's true art is for helping people get out of their own way and commune...

Discusses how to use inkblots to create a wide range of artistic forms. Offers tips and advice on special techniques and contains step-by-step instructions for a handful of sample projects.

"Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still...

"A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum"-- Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work...

An artist's drawing of a star begins the creation of an entire universe around him as each successive pictured object requests that he draw more.

The author's sequel to her successful guide to creativity shows readers how to tap their child-like inquisitiveness, wonder, and delight to re-connect with their own creative selves

Creativity is not a gift from the gods, says Twyla Tharp, bestowed by some divine and mystical spark. It is the product of preparation and effort, and it's within reach of everyone who wants to achieve it. All it takes is the willingness to make creativity a habit, an integral part of your life: In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative. In The Creative Habit, Tharp takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable...

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book's co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is experienced...